


things that are never fully ours

by TolkienGirl



Series: Fixing on the Hour - Vignettes [11]
Category: Fixing on the Hour - TolkienGirl, Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Bing and Darcy are so different and yet so well-matched, College, Female Friendship, Gen, title from a conversation with the real-life Bing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 06:52:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16279757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Bing didn't talk like other people.





	things that are never fully ours

Bing lifted up the tiny silver cross, weighing it on the curve of thumb and forefinger. “Beautiful.”

“I’m glad,” Darcy said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “I wasn’t sure—I didn’t want to impose.”

“Oh, I’m religious,” Bing said. “A lot more than the rest of my family.” She tilted her head. “I still go to church. And I like to visit the garden behind it afterwards. A garden, in the city…what a blessed thing, right?” She smiled, half to herself. “So, thank you. I’ll wear this always, and I’ll pray for you.”

Darcy nodded her gratitude, though the gift had been hers.

“How’d you decide not to carry a backpack?”

“What?” Darcy stared at Bing, who was sitting, cross legged, chin on hands, in a nest of a patchwork quilt.

Bing didn’t have to live in a dorm room, but she'd wanted the experience. Darcy, despite her initial bemusement, found herself visiting more often than not.  

“Just wondering,” Bing explained. “College, backpacks. They’re convenient and easy. And mine—” here, she gestured unnecessarily—“Has donuts on it. Which is adorable. _I_ thought, anyway. Makes me happy to look at, and believe me, I need all the happiness I can get in the mornings.”

Darcy waited for the point. There always was one, with Bing, but it usually took a good deal of _getting to_.

“So,” Bing continued, “Most people here have backpacks, donuts or not. But you carry a briefcase. And I kind of know _why_ —you’re very cool and aloof, and sophisticated, and it sets you apart. But I wonder _how_. _How_ do you know exactly what to do that will fit with who you want to be?”

Bing didn’t talk like other people.

Darcy prodded the inner wall of her teeth with the tip of her tongue. “It’s not a thought,” she said. “Not really. I just—wear and buy what I want to wear and buy.”

“OK.” Bing never pushed. Didn’t ask, in this moment, why all of Darcy’s decisions ended up being somber and rigid, whatever the why and how.

 

The snowstorm had shut them into Bing’s room. It turned the windows dove-gray and rattled the roof from spine to edges.

“You know,” Bing murmured, and her voice was a little hollowed out, spoken from the cathedral of her chest as she lay flat on her back, “Sometimes I think that the things we believe most deeply to be part of us are never fully ours.” She breathed in, out. “Do you ever feel that way?”

Darcy never felt like Bing did. _That_ , of course, felt like a tragedy.

“Do you mean…everything we want, and want to be, is only found outside us?”

Bing nodded. Then she laughed a little. “Hey.”

“What?”

“You always say you never understand me. But you do.”

 

“Someday,” said Bing, “I’m going to tell you all about how _you_ are really the soft-hearted one.”

Darcy’s eyes stung a little. “I don’t know what you mean.”


End file.
